


Gaymer

by LadyAmina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Coming Out, Fluff, Genderfluid Sirius Black, Other, prompt, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 10:24:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15839322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAmina/pseuds/LadyAmina
Summary: Prompted by an image on Tumblr. Sirius gets a job at a video rental store, a decision which may or may not have something to do with the gamer boy who comes in once a week.





	Gaymer

Sirius pushed the heavy glass door open, feeling more hopeless than he had all day, which was an accomplishment as he had spent the entirety of this Thursday going door to door of every shop on the street in search of a job. Not a career, just something to provide a little extra cash for the summer.  He and James were planning a road trip to nowhere in particular, and gas wasn’t exactly free at the pump. 

He was so tired, he hardly noticed which store he had entered.  It was fluorescently well-lit and smelled of industrial carpet cleaner. The neat little shelves of DVDs gave it away as a video rental store.

Somewhere in the back of Sirius’s exhausted mind, he thought _how is this place still in business?_

“Can I help you find anything?” A round, mousy boy behind the counter in the back of the shop asked.

“A job?” Sirius approached the register.  “I mean, do you happen to be hiring?  I’m looking for a part-time job.”

The boy behind the counter, whose nametag read _Peter_ , looked skeptically at Sirius’s homemade t-shirt dress and his deliberately bad posture.

“Do you know anything about movies?”

“Err,” Sirius searched for something intelligible to say. But what was there, really, to know about movies? “I’ve watched some before.”

Peter’s retaliatory comment was cut short by the high, halted _beep-beep_ that signaled the door opening.

“Hello, can I help you find anything?” he greeted the customer.

“Just looking, Pete” the newcomer didn’t even glance at the counter before heading off to the right of the entrance, where the single shelf of video games was housed.

Sirius couldn’t look away.  The customer had messy curls and legs that just stretched on forever. 

“Oh ,hey, Remus.”

With great difficulty, Sirius managed to stop gawking at the stranger.  “You know him?” he all but hissed at Peter.

“Remus?  Yeah?  He comes in once a week or so.”

The Remus boy walked up to the counter with a single CD case and a vaguely wrinkled coupon.  While Peter rang up his order and printed the receipt, Sirius found himself staring again.  Although he only realized that he was doing this when Remus looked over and made eye contact. 

Sirius thought he might have sighed aloud.  Remus’s eyes were deep, and just green enough to be noticeably green. They took the air right out of Sirius’s lungs. 

_This is it,_ he thought to himself _, this is the ‘gay panic’  James was always talking about whenever he met a pretty person_.  As far as he could tell, Sirius had never experienced anything much past _mild gay aesthetic interest_ before this very moment, even with the people he’d thought he had really liked.

Before he walked away, Remus gave Sirius a quick, but genuine smile.  Sirius made a decision on the spot as the door shut behind him.  “Okay.  I have to work here.”

“Right, but do you know any single thing about movies?”

Sirius shook his head. “Really, really not at all, but I am a fast learner.”

 

                        In all fairness, he wasn’t lying about being a fast learner.  Over the next few weeks, Peter came to agree that it was probably best that Sirius was essentially a blank slate.  It meant he could educate him exactly as he pleased. 

Sirius still wasn’t an avid connoisseur of film, but he could at least carry on a full conversation, and had enough of a foundation to assist the little old lady customers that came in every afternoon like clockwork. 

Peter had been wrong about one thing, though.  Remus.

The boy with the curls didn’t come in once a week, he came in once every few days.  Not that Sirius was tracking his schedule, but whenever Remus was in the shop, Sirius was hyper-aware of that fact.  He did maintain the coupons, clipped haphazardly from the Sunday paper on a weekly basis, but by Sirius’s count, Remus was in the shop two or three times between coupons.  Sometimes just to browse, sometimes to rent old games. 

Sirius always made a point to be the cashier on register whenever Remus was around.  He thought they might be developing a bit of a rapport.  Sirius could never recall what the games were called, but he always asked Remus if he’d enjoyed the game he’d taken home last.  Remus would always give a brief synopsis and a critique, and Sirius would do his best to keep up. He liked the way Remus gave descriptions.  He seemed to care deeply even about the ones he was least interested in.

Sirius liked this exchange even more than he liked Remus’s perfect, sage-green eyes. 

Once, about three weeks after their first meeting, Sirius had needed to run out of the shop after Remus and track him down on the street.  He had left an important-looking document inside a CD case.  Well, maybe it wasn’t _that_  important – a business card with the company name and information crossed out, and a hastily scribbled phone number on the reverse side.

Remus looked utterly confused when Sirius handed it to him.  Apparently, he’d just assumed Sirius would throw it away, but Sirius maintained – to himself – that it _could have been_ important.

 

Interacting with cute, green-eyed gamer-boys was only part of Sirius’s job, much to Sirius’s dismay, but he did apply his best effort to all other video-rental-store duties, and at the one month mark, Peter threw a small party for Sirius.  In actuality, this meant Peter paying for a lunch of pizza and salads, but Sirius appreciated the gesture immensely.  He found he quite liked being responsible for his own pocket money – a triviality he hadn’t ever had to consider until he’d run away from home to live with James a few years prior.  He liked feeling like his hard work was worth something tangible, even if he was still largely in the care of The Potters.

It was during this miniature pizza party that Remus walked into the shop wearing possibly the best shirt Sirius had ever seen.  It was plain, and black, and hung from Remus’s lanky shoulders in a way no simple t-shirt had any business doing.  On the front of it, in large, white lettering, it proclaimed “GAYMER”.  Below that was the silhouette of a game controller – Sirius had no idea what kind it was meant to resemble – positively glowing with the colours of the rainbow.

Sirius nearly choked on a mouthful of lettuce and arugula, his head an instant swirl of gay panic.  Did it mean that Remus was gay? Was it a joke?  Was it a reference to something Sirius wasn’t familiar with?

Remus smiled like he always did, and disappeared behind the games shelf for a few moments. 

Sirius made sure to stand closer to the register as Remus made his decision, so that he could jump on to complete the order before Peter got the chance. 

Remus approached the counter with a game Sirius knew for a fact he had just played the week before.  Not that he was keeping track. 

“Do you like my shirt?” Remus asked.  Sirius dared to glance up from the register to look at Remus’s shirt again.

“I do, I really like it.”

Remus smiled.  His features softened so delightfully when he did that.  Sirius practically swooned.  “Oh, good, because I bought it for you.”

Peter made a noise behind Sirius, but Sirius could look nowhere but at Remus.  “You what?”

“I got it for you.  Well, no, I got it for me, but with you in mind.”

Sirius’s thoughts twirled and twirled without landing, “Why?”

Remus shrugged like this was nothing.  “I’m running out of  ways to try to get you to ask me out.”

“You-“

“I  _thought_ you were going to do it that first day, but no.  And then the next few times it seemed like you almost did, too.  So I’ve been back, like, ninety times in the last month or so, seeing if this will be the time.”

Sirius stared at Remus, struggling to keep his head.

“My next step is going to be draping myself in a pride flag and carrying a huge sign that says ‘I’m Gay, Ask Me Out’.”

Sirius cleared his throat. “Am I too late, now?”

Remus pretended to check a watch he wasn’t wearing.  “No, I’d say you’re right on time.”

“I think I’d like to wait, though.  I want to see how you look draped in pride flag.”

“Sirius!”

Sirius cut him off before he could yell anything else.  “Remus, I’m gay, can I take you out on a date?”

“What!  Well, I have to say, I am floored.  Absolutely shocked,” Remus laughed at the indignation Sirius couldn’t quite suppress.  “Yes, yes, yes, please, thank you for asking.  My number is here – try not to give it back to me, this time.” Remus handed him another business card with the front slashed through, and the handwritten number on the back.  Possibly the very same one.

Sirius didn’t get the chance to ask him any of the many questions he had before Remus left the shop.  But he didn’t mind waiting.  There would be plenty of time for questions on their date.

 


End file.
